


exhaustion

by 28ghosts



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Episode: s04e24 The Quickening, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, augment angst, kind of break up, we can't be together because reasons.jpg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-10 15:11:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15294195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/28ghosts/pseuds/28ghosts
Summary: There's only one person Julian Bashir wants to talk to after returning from the Teplan system. There's only one person he won't let himself talk to.





	exhaustion

Arriving back on the station after three weeks on the Teplan homeworld is strange. The air tastes different, and Julian Bashir had become accustomed to day-night cycles again while in the Gamma Quadrant. Cycles which don't quite exist on DS9. There's merely suggestions of day-night cycles, all the better to suit the station's inhabitants working any number of variations of shifts. It should all seem so much familiar than it does. At least, numbly, he can make his way to his office in the Infirmary. It's the first thing he does after a shower.

Sisko finds him. Compliments his work. As short-tempered as Bashir might feel, he can't find it in himself to be resentful of the captain. His report was good, yes. Left out all the personal bits, like telling Ekoria that he'd find her a cure. Only the medically relevant parts. Theories as to why the vaccine works on unborn children and not their parents. Estimated time-tables for full vaccine coverage. Recommendations for Starfleet's eventual relief mission. Nothing of his absolute failure in it.

Bashir works for another few hours after Sisko leaves him, though in somewhat distracted fashion. Just after midnight, the computer chimes out, "Station time is oh-hundred hours. You have one appointment at thirteen-hundred hours."

The alert jars him, but he doesn't have to think before responding. "Computer, cancel lunch appointment."

"Appointment canceled."

Bashir leans back to better examine the splay of computer read-outs. Even before Bashir's initial return to the station, while he and Kira had been on the runabout, Sisko had commed and insisted on a few days of leave following three weeks straight of work. Bashir had protested. If anything, he'd get more rest if scheduled to work. As it was, he couldn't bear rest, let alone relax. With judicious use of Starfleet-approved stims, he'd have no trouble working at least a day straight. If he was working with patients, he'd at least feel obliged to sleep.

It’s gotten him in trouble before, being a bit too good at buckling down to do the work regardless of exhaustion. At the Academy, there’d been rumors he had access to stims of the not-so-Starfleet-approved sort and hence could keep his head down studying long past the hour when the rest of his classmates had passed out into their books. That was when he’d started setting an alarm for himself in the evenings, a reminder to at least pretend. To go back to his quarters even if he knew sleep would be long coming.

His Wednesday alarm, though, had served a different purpose once. He'd set it after the third time Garak had shown up to the Infirmary in the middle of a Wednesday morning to inquire as to Bashir had any urgent paperwork on hand that he might choose to address before lunch, rather than cancelling again?

It's been two and a half months since he had lunch with Garak. The three weeks on Teplan, and the weeks before that halting and awkward whenever he'd seen the man. Just before Bashir's departure for the Gamma Quadrant, they'd run into each other at Quark's and nearly stumbled into a good argument before Odo had interrupted them. Bashir still remembered too keenly the glimmer of recognition in Garak's eye, the satisfaction. _There’s that spark, Doctor,_ he could all but hear.

He’d felt sick for hours. Out-drank Miles enough Miles made Quark cut him off. Enough that he kept forgetting to hide how quickly he metabolized alcohol. Stupid, stupid. He was going to get caught if he didn’t stay careful; he was going to do something like thinking _shooting someone was justified_ \--

Bashir grinds the heels of his palms into his eyes. He’s hunched over himself, elbows braced on his knees. He’d hoped, stupidly, that he’d come back to the station with an annoyed message from Garak waiting for him. Really, Doctor, leaving the station for so long just to avoid me? Perhaps overly dramatic measures, wouldn’t you say? In the middle of the night, rerunning tests while Ekoria twitched in her sleep, he’d slipped into imaging entire conversations with Garak. Surely Garak would have found a way to understand the weight of guilt Bashir was feeling. Garak wouldn’t have tried to congratulate him for failing to find a cure; he would grant it as the partial victory it was.

He should send a message to Garak. Apologize. Ask him...

"Computer, delete all lunch appointments scheduled for Wednesdays on the Promenade."

"Deleting events. Events deleted."

* * *

Jadzia wanders by after her shift. "Still at it, huh."

Bashir grits his eyes closed. He's been battling headache for the last six hours of simulations, and the last thing he wants is company. Still, it's Jadzia. "Afraid so," he says, with forced cheer.

"I'm no doctor, but can I take a look?"

"Please do."

Jadzia leans over his shoulder. "Hmm. I'd say..." Something traitorous in him still thrills at the way Jadzia's voice dips into a more intimate register, even when he can guess where she's going with this, even when he _should_ be consumed with guilt. "You need to get some rest."

"I can't," he says.

"Well, you need to anyways."

"By my calculations, there's been twenty-seven deaths since I left," he says to the screens. It's all too easy to imagine. Even if his memory weren't enhanced along with the rest of him, he's reasonably certain he'd never forget the way those sores started to change colors.

"You modeled the lifespan of the disease," Jadzia guesses.

Bashir nods. He digs two fingertips into his temple. His headache is constant now, no relief from the usual hypos. "Computer, access program Bashir model gamma two." The computer screens flicker black and red with the program he'd thrown together. Jadzia leans over the console, and Julian glances up at her. She looks tired, too, but the sort of tired you just look after a long shift. A little weariness in her voice, but not a hair out of place. "I figured after 200 years of a disease, it's not a mistake that the Teplan people are still around. The Dominion engineered that virus to allow reproductive equilibrium."

"So that most people survive to have children, but not all," Jadzia says. She sighs. "This is good work."

It is. How many Teplans needed to survive to have how many children if so many others die before reaching childbearing age? What sort of randomness would allow for that? It's not a hard question for a computer, but Bashir hadn't needed a computer to figure it out. During nights on the Teplan homeworld, after Jadzia had left, there hadn't been much else to do, after all.

Jadzia sits herself down in the chair next to Julian and spins it to face him. "Listen to me. You know as well as I do that the odds of you hitting some miraculous breakthrough by sitting here refusing to sleep are pretty much nonexistent."

Twenty-seven people dead.

"The Federation is putting together a relief mission as we speak, and they'll do what they can. Which is more than you'll be able to do sitting here, no matter how smart you are. You're just one person, Julian."

"I know, I know," he says.

She clasps his shoulders for a moment. "I'm not sure you do."

She can't ever know precisely how wrong she is. Prophets willing, no one else will ever know, but _he's_ got to remember that he's an Augment. That the littlest thing could give it away. That there's something in his genetic coding that might damn well warp overnight and leave him the sort of madman willing to hold a phaser to a once-friend's head for the so-called greater good.

(He wants to talk to Garak so badly that he aches with it. Sometimes on the Teplan homeworld, he'd thought he'd heard Garak's voice in the middle of the night -- saying idle, harmless things. Nothing like _Dr. Bashir, I'm relieved, I must say_ , over lunch in the replimat. _You demonstrated admirable ruthlessness. I must be a better influence on you than you let show._ And a rush of nausea, Bashir excusing himself to hide in his office, panicked, screwing up the courage to finally do the right thing and _turn himself in_ \-- an Augment, willing to kill, what was he _doing_?)

"You need to get some sleep."

"I slept earlier," he lies, "here." He rubs at the back of his neck for effect. Jadzia rolls her eyes.

"Alright, fine. I won't try to talk you into sleeping. How about a drink? My treat."

He shouldn't. He should put another few hours worth of work in. He shouldn't let Jadzia haul him up and lock the computer down and shove him into the hall.

He lets Jadzia haul him up and lock the computer down and shove him into the hall.

Bashir is tired, so tired. Tired of staring at computer screens, waiting for the deaths-since-departure measure to increment. Tired of the base-pair sequences he's long since memorized. Tired of hiding what he's capable of. _Tired._

* * *

Jadzia steers them towards Quark's and flirts her way into two seats at the bar, despite the hour. Which is, apparently, one where Quark's is busy. True to her word, she orders them both drinks, strong.

They down them. Jadzia signals Quark for another round.

Bashir doesn't scan the crowd for Garak. Instead, he tries to follow along with Jadzia's banter. He mostly fails, though he's still got his wits about him enough to appreciate Jadzia's attempts at distracting him.

She walks him to his quarters, hugs him goodnight, and threatens to encrypt his research if she sees him back at a research terminal any time soon. He smiles dumbly in response. He watches her head back to the turbolift.

Into his quarters since the first time he'd left. He sits at the end of his bed with Kukalaka held to his chest.

He misses Garak. The friend-sometimes-lover he'd shot in the neck. The friend-sometimes-lover who was the sort of person who'd convinced him shooting someone in the neck was reasonable. He misses him.

He's supposed to be better than this. He's supposed to be good. And instead, he's tired. Just tired. So very, incredibly tired.


End file.
